cchris

Grabbed this from one of our news dailys and found a quirky value in throwing it up.

Real place or just a bit of advertising?

Anyone been here or knows about the place?

An odd but interesting corner of the globe.

LINK



"GOODBYE, God, we're going to Bodie." It's a chilling concept, but to the small girl who wrote this in her diary in the 1890s, when she moved with her family to this remote goldmining town in California's High Sierra, the town's reputation was common knowledge.

Today Bodie (population 5) is peaceful and picturesque, but 150 years ago it was one of the wildest towns in the Wild West, renowned for wickedness, genuine badmen and "the worst climate out of doors".

Two years after its foundation in 1877 Bodie had a population of 10,000, and among its 200 buildings were 65 saloons and seven breweries. Whiskey was imported 100 barrels at a time.

"A sea of sin, lashed by the tempest of lust and passion," the Reverend Warrington called it in 1881, and certainly most of those saloons had rooms upstairs which could be hired by the hour.

Not that all the prostitutes were wicked women. Rosa May, the town's most famous lady of the night, may have been handy with a knife – she was notorious for slashing the faces of men who stepped over her line – but she was also good-hearted, and nursed many of the miners through a pneumonia epidemic.

In spite of this, when she died from the same disease at the age of 57, the more respectable women of the town refused to allow her to be buried in the town's cemetery, so today you will find her grave outside the boundaries.

If you like towns that haven't been corrupted by commercial tourism, Bodie is the place for you.

There are no souvenir shops, no cafes, no McDonalds, no motels, and only one public lavatory.

It looks like a film set, but it's the real thing, because it's kept by the Californian authorities in a state of what they call arrested decay.

This means none of the buildings has been restored or rebuilt, but they are maintained and patched up so that they don't fall down.

The result is a place that still feels alive.

Although only 5 per cent of the buildings remain after two catastrophic fires, there are enough to give you a feeling of what the town must have been like, and its soul is almost palpable.

After half an hour in the museum, you feel you know many of the inhabitants, and if you're lucky enough to meet Michael O'Connell, one of the state rangers on the property who keep out vandals and maintain the buildings, you'll learn what it means to live there, especially if, as in our case, he takes you into his house and plays his guitar.

The rangers have six-month stays at the park, and Michael loves living there, because it gives him time to compose his country music, which he takes on the road in his holiday breaks.

He sings of the whisper of the wind in the sage brush sounding like poetry; he tells eloquent stories about Rosa May and her girls; and he talks about the wildlife that visit in quiet times, like the bear and her two cubs who came right up to his house last winter, and the soldier eagles who soar above the buildings.

When you want to wander off on your own, as you're sure to do, find your way to the cemetery and look for Rosa May's headstone, erected only 40 years ago by the nephew of one of her friends (or should that be clients?)

Her name is carved roughly into an irregular whitewashed stone, with a simple cross in red, and although it's probably not the actual spot where she's buried, it's evocative not just of her isolated status in the town, but also of the love that many people felt for her.

Bodie is a goose-bump kind of place, especially in early winter.

For once in your California experience, you'll find something that isn't a Disneyland version but the real thing, and it was probably the highlight of my trip.

Incidentally, some scholars have suggested that what the little girl actually wrote in her diary was "Good, by God, I'm going to Bodie". If you visit the town in high summer or in the depths of winter, you'll know which version to believe.

Alison Cotes travelled to California courtesy of United Airlines and was a guest of California Tourism, phone (02) 9959 4356, website www.visitcalifornia.com
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IF YOU GO
Bodie, a State Historic Park in California's High Sierra, is about 16km along a dirt road off Highway 395, about an hour north of Mammoth Lakes, and 20 minutes south of Bridgeport. There there are plenty of hotels and motels at both places.
The park is open whenever the road is open, which means not often during the depths of winter, although you can ski in.
Entry fee $5 per car.

The Sunday Mail (Qld)

erion

For some reason, I keep thinking "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany. We must be cautious."

KMA-628

I haven't been to that one, but I have been to quite a few out here in Colorado.

Its kinda fun to load up the SUV...

-Eeek*GASP* "Did he say 'SUV'? Quick, hide the kids!"

....and get off the asphalt to find and tool around in these places. Some are easy to get to and others can be quite difficult (i.e. the old back road to Tin Cup).

From what I have seen, they are very real with quite a bit of interesting history tied to them.

I like the "ghost stories" that go with these towns.

http://www.850koa.com/shows/zoo/sphoto-boo-03.html

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water_boy1999

Fascinating!!! I will definitely have road trip out there to check it out.

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Tinker

I have been there.. It is cool.. I hit on the way back from Yosemite

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